It always intrigues me to read someone's account of how they have given up TV. More often than not, they are just watching some TV show (in this case 24) via some other distribution channel. They are still watching TV just not on TV. Also more often than not, they will degrade some other show as evidence of the disaster that TV is all the time missing the point that what TV programs you watch are a matter of taste and choice.
Ridiculing So You Think You Can Dance for being shallow and pointless while lauding 24 which is filled with completely fake scenes and violence is odd. While the "reality" part of SYTYCD is a little silly, the people on the show are actually doing something amazingly hard in front of quite a few people with no props or fake explosions to manipulate your emotions. And I say this with no real affinity to either show.
In the end, fine, say you've given up TV. But really you've only given up the distribution channel and you have chosen to watch things you like when you like them. But calling one show rubbish and using it as an example of why TV in toto is bad starts to sound like a matter of taste to me. Just because you don't like something does not mean it sucks.
Agreed. It's probably more accurate to say "I've given up just watching anything, and now choose to watch only the TV programs that interest/entertain me".
Which is what a large amount of people already do, who own a TV.
So the fact you own/don't own a TV is irrelevant. You've changed your behavior from 'watch whatever is on', to 'watch things I want to watch'.
It's also that many anti-TVers are simply anti-TV-ad-ers, though they don't explicitly state so. Most alternate sources of TV content have fewer ads (at least, of the kind that interject into the content) than TV. Beyond that, about the only thing you can complain about is the timing of what's available / what will fit on your DVR, where you can stream from Hulu or expand your computer's HD space as needed.
In particular, now that I have a 18-month-old son, I find myself slowly putting plans into motion to ensure that he won't have to "put up with them", or, if you want real honesty, I don't have to put up with him getting barraged by ads.
(Just having a Netflix subscription is a good start now. They've got a range of stuff on Watch Instantly. I've got a couple of years before it really gets acute, too, and the situation may improve by then even more.)
Oh, training a kid to resist the commercials is part of a standard education now, but going up against industries with 60+ years experience in manipulating toddlers and young kids is something I'm going to try to avoid. Hopefully I can hold them back until it's more of a fair fight.
Yeah may be true. And I agree it's a problem in the ad heavy US, but not as much other places. Also, just get a PVR, start watching the TV show 10 minutes after it started, and skip the ads if they annoy.
There's something you lose if you just go to on demand stuff. TV is an 'event', at a specific time. Kids go to the playground and talk about what they saw on TV last night. I think that's pretty useful socially to have shared experiences like that. I'd hate to be the kid that doesn't have anything to talk about because his parents don't have a TV.
Overall, I agree, though plenty of arguments can be made for and against this, especially where TV is concerned (given its brain-rotting tendencies). Personally, I grew up on mostly different shows than everyone else anyway, so I only shared experiences with an extremely small group of people, most of whom I'm sure I never met. Bill Nye, Nova, and generally PBS (no cable) were my shows of choice through all of elementary school. I also had the Animaniacs lineup near its beginning, but the vast majority of other kids my age (at my school) didn't get most of it.
Not bragging about my "mental might" here, my parents & older sister just did a good job loading me with things to learn before and during that age, so I had a real intellectual advantage at elementary school. They taught me most things 1-on-1 well before they came up in school. It's definitely put me in a different social circle, as I associate more with geeks than other stereotypes, but I'm happy here. For myself, I'll call not sharing a lot of the "normal" TV experience a positive thing.
This is somewhat true, and it is the reason I started watching Lost. But I just don't think that a kid (or adult) is going to be that socially backward just because they didn't watch a TV show. I mean, sure--you hang out with people who like the same stuff that you do, so you have stuff to talk about normally. Fine. But it's not like you seek out stuff to do just because--not because it sounds interesting--but because you want to be able to talk about it. Sounds like a desperate way to get friends.
"Which is what a large amount of people already do, who own a TV."
I don't necessarily agree with this statement. I do not believe people are as selective with what they watch if they own a TV (yes, I know, there are always exceptions). When you actively seek out the content when/where/how you want it, as well as probably paying for it in some cases, you are much more selective with what you watch and how much time you spend watching it.
If people own a TV, they are using the hundreds of channels they have to suck up time rather than providing them true entertainment. People who own TVs, in my opinion, are much more likely to channel surf and just find a boring show to fill up their time because they find nothing else to do. This gets even worse with the increasing use of DVRs.
It turns into not filling an interest/entertainment need but rather providing a diversion.
... Just like the web. If anything, the web is worse if you're susceptible to this sort of time wasting brain rot addiction.
I'd say it's best to cure the problem (If you have one) than to proclaim that TV is bad.
The same sort of personality could waste time reading the dictionary or an encyclopedia. Not because they want to lookup something, just because they're bored. But that doesn't mean books are bad.
Those of us who really don't watch TV don't generally feel inclined to write our accounts down.
Take me for example. After my son was born 5 years ago we got busy and decided that we were going to not be connected. My wife connected the TV for a few days to watch Obama win. Then disconnected it since.
My wife rents movies from Netflix. We get movies from the library for my son. (He probably watches about 6-8 hours a week.) We bought a handful of DVDs. But on the average day the (disconnected) TV doesn't even get turned on for that. And the last made for TV show I'm aware of in the house was when my wife decided to watch Weeds.
But to me it is a non-story. I simply don't feel the need to turn the TV on and I don't seek the content out in any other media. I simply have a full life and TV isn't part of it. To such an extent that the non-presence of TV isn't a story for me, it is simply a fact of life.
TV is a distribution channel funded by advertisers - when you're making a show for TV, your economic reality is that you survive by proving that you're delivering eyeballs to advertisers. When you create content for iTunes, the economic reality is that you're creating content that people explicitly choose to buy. I would imagine that this will lead to "better" content on the whole.
Yes, we fall in the group of "alternate distribution channel". We have a TV for movies, no cable. I occasionally watch the last part of football games on it. We do occasionally get TV shows via Netflix, and there's a couple of shows I'll watch online.
We just don't have time to use a full subscription. It's not like we're sitting at home staring at the walls wishing we had cable. So if we paid for it, we'd either not use it (waste of money), or stop doing something we're already doing--which would either be something we like already, or needs to be done. So either way, it just doesn't seem like a good idea.
I agree to an extent. The author should not have been critical of one show and praiseworthy of another. TV is great for winding down and not having to think much. Both shows fill that capacity in a lot of respects.
The one glaring omission in this post is the commercials. I absolutely can't stand commercials. 2 minutes of commercials for 5 minutes of actual show? Give me a break. That is the only reason why I don't watch TV.
Ridiculing So You Think You Can Dance for being shallow and pointless while lauding 24 which is filled with completely fake scenes and violence is odd. While the "reality" part of SYTYCD is a little silly, the people on the show are actually doing something amazingly hard in front of quite a few people with no props or fake explosions to manipulate your emotions. And I say this with no real affinity to either show.
In the end, fine, say you've given up TV. But really you've only given up the distribution channel and you have chosen to watch things you like when you like them. But calling one show rubbish and using it as an example of why TV in toto is bad starts to sound like a matter of taste to me. Just because you don't like something does not mean it sucks.